Discoursing of Olives
In Romans, Paul writes of Gentile Christians as a wild olive branch which has been grafted into the cultivated olive tree, which is Israel.
God had so carefully prepared his people Israel down the years until that 1st century AD for the coming of Messiah. We who are not 1st century Jewish believers have been grafted onto that Jewish olive tree, long cultivated by the Best of Gardeners. We can draw nourishment from its roots.
How then do we read Scripture and in particular, Revelation - a quintessentially Jewish book?
Do we try to read it from our own culture’s pagan-Greek-thinking perspective? If so, then we are trying to break off a branch from the cultivated olive tree & graft it onto the wild olive tree. The wild tree’s roots draw nourishment from the wrong soil; it’s the wrong food for producing the best olives.
Or do we read 1st century Jewish Christian literature from a 1st century Jewish Christian perspective: that cultivated olive tree which drew nourishment from good soil, prepared over the long years to receive the Messiah and his truth? All of the New Testament was written by 1st century, 1st generation Jewish Christians: natural branches of the cultivated olive tree. The particular people that God finally had ready after 1000s of years. Even then, it was very hard for Jesus to get his message understood.
Surely as a wild olive branch, we need to be fed by the cultivated olive tree, & not vice versa. That is, to humbly submit our pagan-Greek-Western thought patterns and submerge ourselves in a different worldview when we read the Scriptures.
I think this is partly what Paul meant by our being grafted in to the cultivated olive tree.